February 15, 2012
01:00 PM (EST)

News Release Number: STScI-2012-12

Astronomers Watch Delayed Broadcast of a Powerful Stellar Eruption

February 15, 2012: Astronomers are watching a delayed broadcast of a spectacular outburst from the unstable,
behemoth double-star system Eta Carinae, an event initially seen on Earth nearly 170
years ago. Dubbed the "Great Eruption," the outburst first caught the attention of sky watchers
in 1837 and was observed through 1858. But astronomers didn't have sophisticated science
instruments to accurately record the star system's petulant activity. Luckily for today's
astronomers, some of the light from the eruption took an indirect path to Earth and is
just arriving now, providing an opportunity to analyze the outburst in detail. The wayward
light was heading in a different direction, away from our planet, when it bounced off dust
clouds lingering far from the turbulent stars and was rerouted to Earth, an effect called
a "light echo." Because of its longer path, the light reached Earth 170 years later than
the light that arrived directly.

The astronomers' study involved a mix of visible-light and spectroscopic
observations from ground-based telescopes. The team's paper will appear Feb. 16 in
a letter to the journal Nature.